Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Happy Birthday Waris & New Xmas Trailer

Firstly, a happybirthday to Waris Hussein who turned 75 on Monday. Waris was of course the director of the pilot episode of Doctor Who : An Unearthly Child back in 1963.

Waris Hussein was born on 9 December 1938 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. He moved to London with his parents in 1947. He attended Cambridge and worked as a trainee at the BBC, where his mother, Attia Hussein, was a newsreader and dramatic star. He became the first Asian
BBC Drama director. According to Waris, he had to put up with a lot of
"innuendo" and gossip about how he got to do what he was doing. He could
feel himself being stared at and it made him determined not to fail.

In 1963, he became director of a new programme called Doctor Who along with Verity Lambert who produced it, and the concept of Sydney Newman. Waris moved on the following year to direct The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling in 1964. A list of his credits can be found here.